`Massive` galaxy cluster detected after 3.8 billion years of Big Bang

Washington: A massive, sprawling, churning galaxy cluster that formed only 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang has been detected.

The research undertaken by astronomers at Massachusetts institute of Technology have detected a massive galaxy cluster located 10 billion light years from Earth and potentially comprised of thousands of individual galaxies.

The mega structure, which is about 250 trillion times more massive than the sun, or 1,000 times more massive than the Milky Way galaxy, is named IDCS J1426.5+3508 (or IDCS 1426) and is the most massive cluster of galaxies yet discovered in the first 4 billion years after the Big Bang.

Michael McDonald, assistant professor of physics and a member of MIT’s Kavli Center for Astrophysics and Space Research, said such a collision may explain how IDCS 1426 formed so quickly in the early universe, at a time when individual galaxies were only beginning to take shape.

McDonald added this massive cluster is sort of like a construction site, it’s messy, loud, and dirty, and there’s a lot that’s incomplete and by seeing that incompleteness, they can get a sense for how [clusters] grow.